University of Iowa researching H1N1 vaccine

University of Iowa researchers are conducting tests to see if a new vaccine will help protect against the H1N1 flu. Patricia Winokur, an internal medicine professor at the University of Iowa, says scientists will first test healthy adult volunteers.

If they find no safety concerns, they’ll move on to testing the vaccine on children and babies.

"We’re going to be testing different doses of the H1N1 vaccine and whether people need one or two doses. We’re also going to be looking at the combination of this new H1N1 flu vaccine with the seasonal flu vaccine that’s already been produced by the companies," she says. "What we want to know is can we give them simultaneously and still get good protection to both influenza viruses."

Winokur says they must first get permission to do recruiting before they can begin enrolling volunteers, but she expects that to happen fairly soon.

"We are submitting these trials to our ‘Human Subjects Office’ and we have to get permission from them to do official recruiting before we can actually sign people up,’" she says. "We do have a registry, if people are interested in giving us their names, and we can contact people when we have permission to do these trials."

The University of Iowa is one of eight institutions around the country that will be involved in the research. If you’d like to volunteer, call 319-356-4848.